Mardi Gras in Mobile

Summary

Mardi Gras in Mobile began its carnival celebration years before the city of New Orleans was founded. In the 1700s, mystic societies formed in Mobile, such as the Societe de Saint Louis, believed to be the first in the New World. These curious organizations brought old-world traditions as they held celebrations like parades and balls with themes like Scandinavian mythology and the dream of Pythagoras. Today, more than 800,000 people annually take in the sights, sounds and attractions of the celebration. Historian and preservationist L. Craig Roberts, through extensive research and interviews, explores the captivating and charismatic history of Mardi Gras in the Port City.

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Mardi Gras in Mobile - L. Craig Roberts

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Introduction

If you read nothing else, read these ten facts about Mardi Gras in Mobile.

1. MARDI GRAS IS THE DAY; CARNIVAL IS THE SEASON.

Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday in French. It is Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins (Ash Wednesday). Carnival is all the parades, balls and parties leading up to Mardi Gras Day.

2. MOBILE WAS THE FIRST CITY IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE TO CELEBRATE MARDI GRAS.

The French settled Mobile first along the Gulf Coast. They had settled Canada before, but it was too cold to have Mardi Gras there.

3. MOST MARDI GRAS PARADES PRECEDE A BALL.

Balls and parades are sponsored by mystic societies, or krewes, and paid for privately. Over 100,000 guests attend Mardi Gras balls, and over 1 million attend parades each year in Mobile, making Mobile’s Mardi Gras the second-largest community festival in the nation each year.

4. FORMAL ATTIRE, CONSISTING OF GOWNS TO THE FLOOR FOR WOMEN AND WHITE TIE AND TAILS FOR MEN, IS REQUIRED AT BALLS.

This is called costume de rigueur. No military uniforms or colored accessories are allowed for men. Daytime balls, called receptions, require cocktail dress and coat and tie.

5. COSTUMING ANYTIME DURING CARNIVAL IS LIMITED TO THE MASKED RIDERS ON FLOATS AND OTHER MEMBERS OF MYSTIC SOCIETIES AT THEIR BALLS.

The public participates on a very limited basis, usually wearing decorative masks on Joe Cain Day or Mardi Gras Day only, but there are no official restrictions.

6. THERE ARE TWO ROYAL COURTS OF MARDI GRAS RUN BY THE MOBILE CARNIVAL ASSOCIATION (MCA) AND THE MOBILE AREA MARDI GRAS ASSOCIATION (MAMGA).

Each association is separate and distinct from the many mystic societies and selects its Royal Courts from Mobile families who have been involved with Mardi Gras and the Royal Courts for generations.

7. THERE ARE FOUR PARADE ROUTES, BUT 95 PERCENT OF ALL PARADES FOLLOW ROUTE A.

Route A is a two-and-a-half-mile path snaking through Mobile’s Central Business District. If you are downtown during Carnival, it would be hard to miss a parade. Parades roll for nineteen days in a row except for two days, which are reserved for parades cancelled due to rain.

8. IN MOBILE, THE COLORS OF MARDI GRAS ARE PURPLE AND GOLD. NO GREEN.

Green was a New Orleans after-the-fact addition in the 1880s.

9. YOU SHOULD SCREAM FOR MOON PIES AND BEADS THAT ARE THROWN FROM THE PARADE FLOATS.

It is the only sure way to catch the goodies, unless you are lucky—or very good-looking!

10. DO NOT MISBEHAVE.

You will be arrested for inappropriate or illegal conduct. Mobile’s Mardi Gras is a family event!

Part I

HISTORY OF MARDI GRAS

Chapter 1

Ancient Festivals

The Early Roots of Mardi Gras

Many present-day religious-based festivals started as pagan, or secular, celebrations. An early Egyptian celebration held during the month of February has been termed a primitive crop-growing festival. It is believed that five thousand years ago, this festival spread into what is now France. There the Druids held an early spring festival at which they sacrificed a young bull, which was called boeuf gras, meaning fatted calf. This festival was Fête du Soleil, or Festival of the Sun.

When the Romans conquered most of what is now Europe, they embraced an old Greek festival, calling it Lupercalia. This event was held every year on or about February 15 until the end of the fifth century. At this celebration, the tradition was to sacrifice a fatted ox. It was yet another late winter or early spring festival.

As the Romans accepted Christianity and over time formed the Roman Catholic Church, an attempt was made, in order to accelerate conversions, to change the old fatted ox celebration into a more Christian celebration connected to their season of Lent. Thus Carnival, as we know it, was born.

Carnival derives from the Latin word carnal and means farewell to meat or farewell to flesh. Meat was a luxury to be given up or sacrificed for God during the Lenten period. At that time, the populace did not have sugar, so there were no cookies, cakes, candy or ice cream to give up. Because water was often dangerous, alcoholic beverages were considered essential and thus were not given up either.

Carnival season was established to begin the day after the Epiphany, with the evening of the Epiphany being known as Twelfth Night, or today January 6, twelve days after Christmas—the day the Magi (wise men) reached their destination. In Mobile, the Carnival season was extended to the American Thanksgiving holiday.

The season ends with the beginning of the Lenten season in several Christian denominations. On Ash Wednesday, many Christians receive ashes on their forehead to mark the beginning of the Lenten season. The day before, Mardi Gras Day, is the first Tuesday beyond forty-seven days before Easter, and Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon, after the Vernal Equinox, the first day of spring. Got that?

Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, Mardi Gras Day, is known as Shrove Tuesday. Shrove derives from the word shrive, which means to confess.

Roman Catholics and Anglicans (later known as Episcopalians in America) began to realize that the day before the forty-seven days of Lenten praying, fasting and soul searching might be a good day to party hearty.

Shrove Tuesday became known as Mardi Gras Day. It was on Mardi Gras Day in Paris during this time period that the boeuf gras, or fatted calf, was introduced again as a paraded spectacle. This, by some, may be interpreted as the beginning of Mardi Gras parading.

In 1817, Lord Byron wrote:

’Tis known—at least it should be—that throughout

All countries of the Catholic persuasion

Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about.

The people take their fill of recreation

And buy repentance—ere they grow devout—

However high their rank, or low their station,

With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masking,

And other things, which may be had for asking.

It should be understood that festivities related to Carnival or Mardi Gras Day are not officially connected to or sanctioned by any denomination. These celebrations are created mostly by Catholics and Anglicans and are timed to coincide with certain church doctrines and traditions.

The events of Carnival and Mardi Gras Day diminished and then were resurrected over time depending on the occasional revolution or whims of rulers in Europe. An example is the French revolution of 1789, which effectively ended pre-Lenten festivities. However, when Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor in 1804, celebrations were restored, and Carnival became more elaborate than ever.

The same has held true in recent times when Carnival has ceased during periods of great wars but returned larger and grander each time.

Chapter 2

Pre–Civil War Mardi Gras

Charles le Moyne de Longueuil et de Châteauguay of France settled Canada in 1641. In 1632, a Frenchman named René-Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, explored the Great Lakes region and discovered the northern beginnings of the Mississippi River. He led an expedition to the lower Mississippi but never reached the mouth of that mighty river.

In 1698, King Louis XIV sent two sons of Charles le Moyne, whose names were Pierre le Moyne, Sieur de Iberville, and Jean Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, to claim the Mississippi Delta for France. After all, those empire-minded Spaniards had claimed the area of what is now Pensacola, Florida, in 1698. Bienville was only eighteen years old, and his older brother, Iberville, was thirty-seven.

In March 1699, the two brothers set up camp on what is now Dauphin Island, Alabama. They called it Isle du Massacre, or Massacre Island. Here they found skeletal remains of Indians strewn about as if a great battle had taken place. In reality, it was an Indian burial site that had been unearthed, it is believed, by recent hurricanes. This site became French headquarters for the colonization of the Gulf Coast.

In 1702, Bienville established the settlement of Fort Louis de la Mobile, named after King Louis XIV, the Sun King, and declared it the capital of the French province of Louisiana. They called Mobile La Mer Mystic, or the Mother of Mystics, where in 1703 it is believed the first Mardi Gras celebration was held in the New World. Mobile has called itself the Mother of Mystics ever since.

Historians tell us that in 1704, Nicholas Langois established the Societé de Saint Louis at the new settlement of Mobile located at 27 Mile Bluff, sixteen leagues above the mouth of Mobile Bay. The Societé de Saint Louis is believed to be the first mystic society, a form of social club, in the New World. Its first Carnival celebration that year was called Masque de la Mobile. This society held its last celebration on Mardi Gras Day in 1842 after surviving 138 years, almost as long as our oldest present-day societies.

Jean Baptiste le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, circa 1700. History of Mobile Museum Collection, the Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama.

Fort Louis and Mobile were moved to the top of Mobile Bay at the mouth of the Mobile River in 1711. This year, it is believed, Nicholas Langois founded the La Boeff Society. This mystic society lasted until 1861, the first year of the Civil War, when its emblem, a huge bull’s head, was dismantled and used for Civil War cannon wadding. It is said that the term shooting the bull grew out of this sad end to the society’s great symbol. Fort Louis was renamed Fort Conde in 1720.

In 1773, the Spanish Mystic Society was formed and lasted until 1833, a total of sixty years. It paraded in Mobile on Twelfth Night, January 6, the Feast of Epiphany.

After being founded in 1718, New Orleans also had mystic societies, which were later called krewes. These old societies held lavish balls on Shrove Tuesday in New Orleans, as an end to Carnival season, and in Mobile on New Year’s Eve or Twelfth Night, considered the celebratory beginning of Carnival season.

As cotton became king in the early 1800s, the South and its port cities, in particular, became extraordinarily wealthy. It is said that what happened in the second half of the twentieth century to Middle Eastern countries with oil wealth is what happened to the South during the first half of the nineteenth century with cotton wealth.

Mobile’s population was growing exponentially, adding almost 1,000 inhabitants each year between 1830 and 1860. According to the 1830 census, Mobile had 3,194 persons and 29,258 by 1860, 7,587 of whom were slaves. Half of the population was locally born, and half had been born in the North or in a foreign country. By 1860, Mobile was the fourth-largest city in the South yet was the third-largest banking center and third-largest exporting port in the United States.

During this time of growth and prosperity, Carnival celebrations began to become the elaborate affairs we enjoy today. None of the mystic societies held parades with themed floats preceding their balls, as is done during today’s Carnival season. In 1830, however, what later evolved into modern-day parading began with a group of Mobile men ending their evening with a little overindulgence.

On New Year’s Eve 1830, Michael Krafft, a handsome one-eyed cotton broker, originally